VIDEO: Birth control debate impacts thousands of employees locally

Some of the region’s largest employers are among those impacted by new rules for religious nonprofits that don’t want to offer birth control for their workers.

Last week, the Obama administration announced its eight revision to a mandate under the nation’s health reform law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, that requires that all insurance plans to offer birth control coverage at no cost to policy holders.

The new measures have the potential to hit home big here in Cincinnati - where religious nonprofits including the region's largest health systems employee more than 30,000 workers.

Among the religious nonprofits not impacted by the new rules locally are more than 100 local Catholic high schools, which have roughly 6,000 employees who do not receive birth control benefits. The insurance plan covering these workers fall into one of just a few categories that allow exemptions from covering certain benefits otherwise required under the ACA.

The new rules handed down last Friday allow religious nonprofits to notify the government, rather than their insurance company, if they don’t want to provide birth control coverage. Doing so paves the way for a third party insurer to offer the birth control coverage for those employees who want it.

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